Illustrator to OpenSCAD to 3D printing

For Philly Tech Week, I will be showing visitors how to take a shape from Adobe Illustrator into the popular open source CAD program OpenSCAD and make a 3D model suitable for 3D printing.

Draw in Illustrator, extruded in OpenSCAD

I’m sure you know Illustrator. It’s the most successful vector drawing program <clarkson>in the world.</clarkson> OpenSCAD is less well known. It is best described as coding for objects. You make a solid with the function cube() and cut a cylinder() out of it with the difference() function, etc. But sometimes you want a more organic or complicated shape to start with. That’s where artist JK Keller stepped in and made a script that automates some of the process for you. What you need for this workshop: